tubthumping
by midnightluck
Summary: Tim gets knocked down and gets up again; that's just part of being Robin. At least, he does right up until he's captured by the Joker and held. Then Tim gets knocked down for good, and it's someone else entirely that gets back up.


_Standard Return of the Joker setup from Batman Beyond here, and Nightwing Comics run of Dick shows up. Rated for bad words, stylized violence, and the incidental and non-graphic death of Jokers/flowers._

* * *

He fights, because he can't not. He tugs and turns and scrabbles for the knots, but credit where it's due, they did a good job on this.

Besides, Bruce will be here soon, he's sure. He just needs to be strong and stay quiet, and he's good at both of those. It'll be fine.

And it is, right up until the sweet chemical smell of rotting pears starts to tickle his nose. He knows that smell. It's too late to hold his breath, he knows, but he does anyway. He holds his breath and inhales shallow when he must, but it's temporary at best.

He has to breathe, eventually, and the world falls away in giggles and smoke.

―

When he blinks into awareness this time, his head is sideways and down and there's a tingle in his fingers. There's a voice somewhere inside that clinically says it's unhealthy, and he almost laughs because _of course it is_.

Everything stop-starts in stutters, and he tries to blink through it. He keeps getting distracted by the way the colors bleed across the walls. Something's keeping his hands behind his back, and he frowns and lets his fingers pick and poke and move until the rope falls away.

It's enough, he thinks, and stands. Or at least tries to; standing up is hard, and keeping steady more so. Still, there's only one guy in here this time, and Bruce will be here soon, or Dick will, and it'd be just embarrassing to have done nothing.

He wobbles, and can almost hear Dick's whisper: _get up, Robin, you're doing fine._ The world's swinging like a pinata, though, and when he goes to take a step he finds that his ankles have been tied up, too.

He slams into the ground, face first, and someone laughs, far away and grating. He needs the ground to stop moving so he can try getting up, but then he breathes smoke and feels fire and everything slides sideways, sweet and easy.

―

He keeps getting up, though. He'll never stop doing that.

―

He comes to again later, and time isn't a real thing anymore and his mouth tastes like stale music.

There's a murmur on the nonexistent wind, and he tilts his head but hears only starshine and grass. Fruit hangs heavy in his nose, and there's a distant scrape across concrete. He thinks maybe he did that? Maybe?

Maybe he made that noise. Maybe someone will hear it? He's waiting on someone, he knows he is, and he knows he needs to get up.

He doesn't know his name, but he does know that.

―

Everything's so _funny_ these days.

―

Sharp feeling blooms like an orchid on his cheek, purple and white and heavy, and it's the first thing he remembers feeling in ever. Something comes down hot and hard like a hammer over his ear, and the people he can suddenly see sway like daffodils.

He blinks everything away, and it goes.

―

A shrill female voice punches through his saran-wrap dream with a "He's _boring_ ," and he half thinks, _what did you expect,_ and he half thinks, _they'll be here soon_ , and he laughs.

―

There's something sticky and crusty on his face and he can feel his heartbeat high under his skin and there's a burning crawl in his arm and he knows there's a word for it but thinking is so _hard_.

―

He's waiting on someone.

He needs to get up.

He's waiting.

―

Oh. the word was simple, wasn't it, floating on the ocean of dark dreams in the back of his head. It's simple and easy and he's almost got it―

―

He gets up again and remembers the word: it's _hurts_.

―

He waits.

It hurts.

He waits.

―

He breaks.

―

His head hurts and there's dark across his eyes. No one's coming, and that thought brings both icy acceptance and an awful roiling rage.

He's lost the word again, but the voices are back. A handful of voices, a small bouquet of them, and he knows the word is coming again.

Someone calls him something, the word like feathers, but it's wrong and gone and not his name. Probably not his name? He doesn't remember, but it's hardly important.

Then there's a click like cold metal, his mind says _gun_ , and instinct happens. He doesn't know anything, can't hear for the screams and can't see for the blur, but there's this voice in his head, telling him to get the hell up already, or maybe it's just the gunshot echoing.

And he does know this: he hates guns. The weight is wrong and the metal is cold and the kickback―he knows it. It's wrong.

So he takes it out of the fight, because he doesn't know much anymore but he knows this. The bouquet of voices has been here before, and his arms know how to swing to take down the iris and the rose and his legs react when ivy comes in to tangle and it's so very very easy. It's the word again, the hurting word, but he's up now and he makes it all stop.

―

When he comes to, some time later, he's curled up on his side in the dark on the concrete. He gasps in breaths of copper and ammonia, and it takes him a while to blink his eyes open into the gloom. The odd shapes around him, he knows them, he knows that bouquet―

Except they never were. They were people, people he recognizes, if not knows. The face paint and the clothes and the stench give them away as Jokerz, the absolute scum of humanity, and he shouldn't feel bad that they're dead.

He may not feel bad, but he still feels the way her skull caved in so easy and the vibration of the snapping of his collarbone and the way he screamed so loud, so loud, so close-

When he's done vomiting, his nose burns in protest and his mouth tastes like stale bile and it is a massive improvement.

They're dead, and he did that, he thinks, looking over them again. He did it, and it was earned. He stopped the pain, and they won't be hurting him again.

He wonders, for a second, why he feels so sick, then, and there's this thing niggling at the back of his mind, this small matter of who he is. But he doesn't reach for it, because it's too much and now he's killed, and he pushes all that to the back, steps on it, locks it under and behind and away. He hasn't got a name or a clue, so he'll cling to his sanity as long as he can, thanks.

So he's sitting there, young and lost and alone, hurting and new. He sits there crosslegged with his bloody hands in his lap, surrounded by the dead, and he wonders what to do. There's this voice he thinks he hears, like a faraway echo passing on the wind, telling him to get the hell up. Or maybe that's the sobs of who he used to be, but that doesn't matter anymore, so he just―he gets up.

* * *

He makes up a name and enlists, at some point. He's probably eighteen, right? That's old enough, and he knows how to fight and follow orders, and it's as anonymous as he can manage without having to actually think.

His rise through the ranks is fast enough to be notable, but not enough to raise eyebrows. He knows how to keep his head down and excel, and he knows how to stand out and when to lie. It's almost easy, and he spends a lot of time not thinking about why that is.

He kills again because he's a good little soldier, and every time it gets easier to forget. He also gets colder inside, but that's easy to ignore; he's been too broken for too long to really register.

The reputation comes first and the honorable discharge next, and he is lost, again, without a purpose. He drifts, taking enough jobs to keep himself fed, and ends up traveling to wherever catches his fancy.

He goes by Eliot, now, and hardly ever flinches from it anymore when he meets a rich man with a bespoke suit and cold eyes, drinking ginger ale from a champagne glass. It cuts deep and turns his head, and that's the only opportunity Damien Moreau ever needed.

Damien pays generously and talks softly, and is delighted to find that Eliot has impeccable table manners and can make small talk. Eliot finds that he's passable at ballroom dance and excellent at charm, and they already know he's deadly. Damien has suits made, and Eliot knows the numbers to ask for for the seam allowances and breaks that allow hidden weapons.

It's all very civilized and Eliot almost feels settled. Almost, because the assignments are getting darker, getting bloodier, and Damien says it all so softly. His voice is steady and gentle as he asks for progressively more unforgivable things.

Eliot works with him for years, right up until he breaks again. He's starting to think he's a lot more fragile than he ever suspected, and this time's the worst so far.

This time, he had a choice.

* * *

He hides a while. He doesn't talk to anyone for a handful of months, but he can't stand being alone in his own head either. An old contact calls with a job, and it's an easy one. Some gangbangers stole a valuable baseball card, and he's to get it back. Easy, quick, justified-it's his favorite type, and it's more than enough to get him back in the saddle again.

Everything changes one late fall day, when a broken man in a rumpled suit tries to get him to play on a team. He'll take the one job because it pays fantastic and he's been meaning to head overseas for a while, but no teams, not ever again.

Yeah, well, that's what he says.

It's nice to have support again, though, and it's nice to make money with clean hands. Something about ducking the law to help people rings right to him, and it's easy to fall into the routine.

* * *

Suddenly it's four-and-a-bit years later, and he's in a loft in Boston. There's people around him, and laughter, and he's comfortable. It's unexpected, but it's nice.

He's trying to watch the game on the massive grid of screens, thinking absently about dinner, but Hardison keeps flicking the left corner into computer stuff.

"C'mon, man, it's the Knights!" Eliot protests, waving his beer, but it's not like he's gonna actually do anything about it.

Hardison makes an absent humming noise, then flicks two more screens into something that's not the game.

There's something familiar about it, though, and it catches his eye. He doesn't know computers like Hardison, can't remember learning about them, but something about that paragraph there looks like red hair, and that framework resolves into a crooked grin, and that line right there-well, that's just _nasty_.

The game flickers away entirely, and Eliot doesn't even mind, trying to keep up with the shifting screens, and then Hardison chokes on a swear. "Shit shit _shit_ what is this, who is this," he babbles, and makes a squawk as he's dragged out of the server.

Sophie looks in from the kitchen. "What's going on?"

"I'm being hacked," Hardison says in utter disbelief. Then, his voice goes high and thin as he repeats, " _I'm_ being _hacked!"_

Parker appears over his shoulder and squints at the screen. "But I thought you were the very best?"

"I am, I am! I so am," Hardison says, taking one hand away from the keyboard long enough to flail. "But I just-what-how is that even-what is this-stop, just stop talking I need to focus-"

Eliot sits up straight on the edge of the couch, game forgotten. He blinks, then says, "Watch your trawler code, she's coming up from behind."

Hardison makes a noise like a dying elephant. "You don't even know what you're saying, this is a frontal-holy shit _how did_ -that's my code! That's my CODE!" He types frantically, then pauses half a second to blink. "Wait, Eliot, how did you know? Shit, no, STOP THAT."

"Want me to pull the plug?" Parker asks, wandering over to the wall while still keeping an eye on the screen.

Before he can answer, Eliot cuts in again. "Dude, she's heading for the BIOS, okay, she likes to yank it out from under you, watch-watch _out_ , no, what are you-"

"Screw you man I'm trying how the _actual hell_ do you even know what a BIOS is-"

"Watch the-she's got you there-oh hell, just move." And he knows Babs, he does, which is why he can neatly root out her code, only it's almost too late.

Hardison's pulled out another laptop, and he types frantically on it, muttering, "I need a reboot."

Eliot growls and says, "Hell no, she's counting on that, look this worm right here-"

"-are you _serious,_ who the hell is this-"

"Oh, no you don't," Eliot murmurs, and executes a particularly vicious defensive code in Hardison's firewall. "Not today, Babs." Then he implements the secondary, and the tertiary, and a command that's not a part of Hardison's system at all. It rewrites from the ground up, replacing everything there with the original code, and is absolutely uninterruptible. And now that he has her on the run, it's a simple matter to fend off the attacks he knows are coming, and then slam down the iron wall of Hardison's firewall. Then he takes the whole system and isolates it, no internet, nothin', and sets it up to run a full diagnostic and restore program.

And then he sighs and runs a hand through his hair and turns away, and Hardison's all up in his face, asking "Who the hell was that?" and "What the hell was that?" and everyone's looking at him, so he reaches for the answers; they're just out of sight in the corner of his mind.

And he reaches, but it's been too long. The memories and the answers slip on by, and he's frustrated and it hurts and his teammates are staring like they don't even know him, which is okay because he doesn't even know himself.

He just wants to go out and get drunk, or sink into a lie or a con, but there's a murmur on the wind saying, _get the hell back up_ , but he can't, he's got nothing to lean on right now, and he longs for something he doesn't know, someone whose voice he can't quite hear. But now is now, so he straightens up and says, "I have no idea what you're talking about," and, shoulders stiff and spine straight, he stalks into the shadows and slips away.

* * *

"Got us a client," Nate says, dropping a folder on the table. He nods to Hardison, and pictures and files and news clippings start appearing on screen. "Young woman named Maria Campbell. She tried to blow the whistle on shady dealings-"

Everyone immediately stops listening when a familiar logo and face pop up.

"Oh, Lexie!" Sophie coos, "How fun!"

"I hear things about their security," Parker murmurs. "Are we going to steal the company? Can we break in, can we?"

And Eliot says, "Hell no, we're not touching Luthor."

Nate frowns at him over his glass, eyebrows drawn low, and asks, "This isn't another Moreau situation, is it?"

And Eliot frowns, because no, he's never worked with Luthor, who is objectively a scumbag, but his reaction was a gut thing, and he still thinks that this is a Bad Idea. But Sophie's already proposed the Topsy Turvey, and Nate's arguing for the Parisian Flip, and Hardison already has a blueprint on screen, so Eliot stretches and thinks and he reaches, reaches for why he thinks so negatively of this, because it's something just out of-

When it's over, he's crouching on the floor in the corner of the back room, hands over his head. There's a sting in his eyes he hasn't felt in ages and all he can hear is "Get the hell back up, Tim," and "This way, Robin," and "That's right, Timmy, just like that," and all he can think is "i killed i killed i used a gun to kill i hurt so many people i stole i'm a bad guy i killedkilledkilled-' but he hears, "Get up, Tim, Robin doesn't take breaks," and "Get _up_ , Tim, Robin's invincible," and the only thing he can manage to gasp out is, "Dick."

And Hardison takes it the only way he knows how, and says, "If you're having a sexual orientation crisis-" and Sophie hits him, hard, on the shoulder and hisses at him to shut up.

And Tim, timtimtimtim he's tim he's tim he gasps out, "Dick" and "―killed" and it hurts so bad that he laughs. He's laughing so sick that it's worrying the others, and it's worrying him, too, because it sounds like-it sounds like that smile in his nightmares, and he's had so much gas that he's broken, and the laugh turns manic, turns real, turns scary, and he claps his hands over his mouth but he's laughing, and he thinks, _I thought I was over this_ , and he thinks, t _hey wanna go after Lex_ _―_ and he―it's just so funny and he's laughing and he can't breathe and he can't―

And Sophie takes a step forward, and Nate holds her back, thank all the gods he does, because he's so dangerous right now. She stays where she is, and asks, "...Eliot?"

He hiccups through the laughter and he tastes salt in his mouth, and copper, because even biting his tongue can't stop it, and he can't inhale, his lungs are seizing, and then Nate, Nate who knows all their triggers, Nate says, loudly, simply, "Get up." And he's never disobeyed Bruce, never, so he hyperventilates on purpose, letting his lungs go out of control in a more familiar way. Then it's a matter of muscles, not mind, and finally he has enough oxygen to breathe, so he wipes his face on his sleeve and stands up.

He's not put back together yet, sharp edges rubbing raw, but he's the center of attention. The team is staring at him and he can't think, and the whole weight of his two lives is pushing him down and tearing him apart and it's easier not to think, so he doesn't.

He doesn't think, and when he's not thinking he always does the same thing. So he pulls out his phone and dials a number that his head doesn't know but his heart couldn't forget, and he lets it ring and ring and ri-" _Hello?_ "

And he just breathes, just hears that word in that voice and he sighs and his head falls back against the wall, and he slides back down it, and on the other end comes that voice, and it says, " _Hello? Who is this?_ " and he hears the soft click that means Dick's activated the trace, so he says, all in a rush, "I think I'm going insane."

Then Dick says, suspiciously, " _Who is this?_ " And he should have seen that coming, really. His voice is different now, deeper and rougher. The gruffness that's second nature to him comes from long habit of intimidation, comes, like all things, from Bruce.

So he concentrates, strips his voice of the accent and the gruff, pitches it just a tad higher, a little younger, and he says, "Dick, I'm breaking."

His hand falls, and the phone with it, landing on the ground at his side. He gives it three more seconds, and hits the hang-up button. And then he ignores the team and waits. They're in Boston right now, so two, maybe two and a half hours on the cycle, but if Dick recognized his voice, then probably about twenty minutes to the nearest zetta tube, and another ten to the bar.

Only, there must be a new tube somewhere, because Dick makes it in ten minutes, total.

And only because Eliot's listening for it, he hears the bell slam out a ring, and he raises his head, having ignored everyone the whole time. Parker sees his reaction to the bell and slips away. She's back in a minute, and Dick's following, Dick wearing a police jacket, breathing and there and real and larger than life except for how's he not, and really, totally, one hundred percent _here_.

So Tim―not Eliot, but _Tim_ ―wraps his hand in the jacket's lapel, tugs, and says, quiet, lost, and broken, "Dick."

Dick collapses beside him and tugs him onto his shoulder and Tim curls into his big brother and just comes apart, because sometimes, you need someone else's help to get back up.


End file.
